Bing Turns 5

Microsoft jumped aboard the search engine bandwagon five years ago with the unveiling of Bing. This is not to say that Microsoft has no search engine capability before that, they had MSN prior but never really gained traction among the masses. Bing was a rebranding exercise of sorts that also had changes made to the underlying technology, and the webpage continued to remain simple since its introduction half a decade ago, sporting a stunning background image that is refreshed daily, while sporting several categories alongside a search bar to boot.

Well, it has been five years since Bing was launched officially in 2009, where back then, it intended to improve the web search experience through the addition of semantic technology in order to develop better and relevant search results. Not only that, a year after its introduction, Bing was working alongside the likes of Facebook and Twitter as part of the effort to index search results where social media is concerned. A couple of years after that, Bing decided to index search results from social media sites, resulting in a new three-column format.

Five years down the road, it does seem as though Bing is growing from strength to strength, having ended up as the pillar of strength behind Microsoft’s voice assistant, Cortana. Here’s to the next five years – and beyond!